We’ve written a lot about how technology can be used to solve the compliance “problem” - especially when it comes to global companies. Being certain of your legal obligations on an ongoing basis is the first step in managing compliance. But this legal certainty is a massive challenge for global companies.

Let's recap the problem of uncertainty in legal compliance -

• global companies must sift through reams of regulation in order to find the relevant sections
• legal requirements differ from place to place
• regulations change all the time
• law is written in different languages and varies in production quality from barely readable PDF's to online documents
• Traditional 'know your law' solutions are manual, expensive and are often out of date by the time they're ready to use.

We've also focused on what humans do best versus what tech does best.

• Tech is great for research and delivering data in an efficient manner
• Humans are necessary for actioning that data and making complex decisions.

Smart use of technology can go some way to solving the problem of regulatory complexity, however, having nifty legaltech at your disposal is actually just window dressing if it's not genuinely assisting you with your specific compliance problem.

You need to be able to actually use the information that has been elegantly provided to you through a legaltech platform.

Before selecting a legaltech solution, it's important to first have an intimate knowledge of your context. You need to know and understand your own compliance ‘problem’. You also need to know what compliance success will look like for you. Achieving compliance success is fully achieving all your compliance goals, tasks and missions.

Compliance success is multi-faceted and filled with its own inherent complexities. So what is the critical consideration when choosing a legal technology solution to assist you?

The moment a legal technology solution becomes relevant to you and your business is when you will see and realise true value. Your technology solution needs to be able to integrate all elements of your compliance success strategy. Technology shouldn’t be a cool piece of software that collects digital dust, it should provide value and be genuinely useful. Why do we buy stuff? Well, to hopefully gain something that will lead to an improvement from the current situation.

Knowing the law is a fundamental and crucial starting point for ensuring compliance success. If you don't know the regulations that apply to your business and context then you could be opening yourself to substantial compliance risk and liability.

In today's world, the not-going-to-happen-to-me mindset is a very dangerous game. So if knowing the law is a fundamental step in the pursuit of compliance success then you need the best possible digital tool to help.

Fortunately there are legal compliance tools that are built to be more than legal registers or simply a technology platform that delivers all the law. They are built to provide certainty and a new way for compliance champions to:

• know their legal requirements with confidence and certainty, and
• empower them to make great decisions to enhance their business’s overall compliance success.

This new technology provides the solid foundation on which to launch all your compliance endeavours. After all, how do you ensure that you are completely compliant if you don’t have easy access to all the up-to-date laws that apply to you at the click of a button, in your moment of relevance?

Think of this technology as your interactive legal compliance hero that tells you what you need to know when you need to know it. Once you have articulated what compliance success looks like for you, you will understand that you don’t need a legal register or legal librarian or an army of lawyers to know the law.

So, what does compliance success look like for you?